While it’s true that a lot of telemarketers are just folks trying to make ends meet, you still shouldn’t feel bad about hanging up on them in mid-sentence.
Many telemarketers aren’t actually allowed to end a call without making a sale; if they did so voluntarily, they’d be fired. By corporate edict, that call was only ever going to end in one of two ways: with you buying something, or with you hanging up on them. There’s no point trying to end the conversation politely because the script they’re working off of demands that they ignore and obstruct any attempt to do so – and they will be punished for failing to follow it.
You hanging up on them is literally the only way for them to get out of a call that’s not going anywhere, so you might as well get it over with. You’re actually doing them a favour.
Yes.
This is also an instance of a more general principle: notice when people are weaponizing social norms, and react by refusing to play the game.
Easy mode for this is the people on the street with pamphlets. They’ll weaponize social norms in an attempt to make you stop and talk to them. One script I see, for instance:
ACTIVIST: Hi! Excuse me, are you a student here?
PASSER-BY: –yes, I am.
ACTIVIST: Do you care about the ethical treatment of minorities on campus?
PASSER-BY: ….um, yes, but…
ACTIVIST: Were you aware that 90% of statistics about minorities are made up on the spot to serve as examples in tumblr posts?
PASSER-BY: …no, I wasn’t, but I really have to…
ACTIVIST: Here’s what our organization does to fight that!
…and so forth.
The trick here, of course, is that the first question is one which it’s socially unacceptable to avoid answering. If the activist opens with “would you like to help save a photogenic animal today?” you can say “no thank you.” If they open with “do you care about the whales?” you can grit your teeth and say “nope.”
But how do you respond to “are you a student here”? It’s a yes or no question, to which you definitely know the answer, so you can’t mumble something about not knowing. And it’s not explicitly related to their cause, so you can’t just automatically say “not today thanks.” (If you try either of those, they’ll call you on it – “what, you’re not a student today?”)
Ignoring them, or saying “that’s none of your business” or “leave me alone,” is a violation of social norms, and means you look like a jerk, because they asked a question that’s well within the realm of what’s socially permissible. So if you’re playing by social norms, you have to answer.
And then, once you’ve answered, you’re engaged in conversation with them. It’s an egregious violation of social norms to walk away from a conversation without going through the normal conversation-ending procedures. And they of course will not participate in those. So now you’re trapped, where you would have been free under social norms to walk past someone shouting at you about statistics if you hadn’t yet engaged with them.
The only way to escape these situations is to notice them and step outside the social game. This is hard; you will get intense this-is-awkward, I-am-being-awful-and-mean feedback from your brain, which has noticed you are violating the rules and would like you to stop. But walking away without saying anything, or saying “I don’t want to talk right now,” is in fact the correct thing to do here.
And that’s easy mode. People selling something play this game blatantly. Hard mode is people who play it expertly, within society, so that you have to go along with what they want or be forced into violating social norms. (And people will go along with a lot rather than violate social norms.) Friends who ask you for things in a way that makes it awkward to refuse. Family members who treat you badly but do it in a way contrived so that any complaint will constitute you being rude. In the really extreme cases, the same dynamic shows up in abusive relationships. It’s the adult version of an abuser convincing a kid he’ll get in trouble if he tells his parents.
So this is, IMO, a really important skill to learn and to deploy properly. Social norms are great, I love doing the dance of social convention, it’s lovely and satisfying, but if your partner keeps trying to stab you with a poisoned dagger, maybe it’s time to stop dancing. Even if that looks weird in the middle of the dance floor.
This is something I never thought needed to be broken down before, but once you did it helped make a lot of things clear. Like, I already knew that sales people are pushy and try to rope you into conversations that are difficult to terminate, but describing the reasons why those conversations feel so awkward to leave abruptly was super enlightening.
Look, just. Fuck politeness.
Say “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m in a hurry“ and walk away without looking back. It’s not like either of you or anyone else ever thought it’s a real conversation anyway.
Your first duty is to yourself, so if you ever feel like you need to get out… get out.
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FantasyBoudicca 